Researcher Menelaos Apostolou is puzzled as to why women are attracted to one another, therefore has blamed it on men. No really.

According to Apostolou the male penchant for women who have sex with women drove the evolution of homosexuality in women.

My argument in the paper is this: A considerable proportion of men desire same-sex attractions in women, and this is one possible reason why many women have such attractions.”

According to a study by the Cypriot researchers, from the University of Nicosia, about 15% of heterosexual men in long-term relationships say that they would want their partner to have a sexual encounter with another woman. This figure goes up to about 30% of men in short-term relationships. The figures for heterosexual women who found same-sex attraction a turn on in their male partners were much lower in both types of relationship.

The researchers argued that one of the reasons for men being attracted to women who experience same-sex attraction could be to increase their certainty of being the father of a potential child if their partner sleeps with someone else.

The paper reads:

A woman, driven by her sexual desires, may seek sexual contact outside of her long-term intimate relationship. When this woman has sex with another woman she does not have sex with another man which translates into same-sex contact reducing the risk of cuckoldry.”

To say the least, the theory has been called a bit of a stretch.

Diana Fleischman, a psychologist at the University of Portsmouth, points out;

The paper totally ignores a lot of other possible hypotheses and makes claims that are really not supported by the evidence they provide. If you ask men about all kinds of sex fetishes their partner might have – so, how would you feel if a woman had a foot fetish – more men wouldn’t care than if you asked women about male partners.”

But even though men are typically more accepting of women’s fluid sexuality, fetishes or paraphilia, women do not have higher rates of them than men do, Fleischman said, which introduces a bit of a hole in the hypothesis.

Another problem is that the study doesn’t account for the effects of porn.

Apostolou argued;

I can’t really see how cultural factors would make some men be turned on when their partners tell them I want to have sex with another woman. These kinds of sexual traits are more instinctive. It’s a mechanism that has been selected to serve a purpose – to make you reproduce. For me, these things are expressions of old mechanisms.

I’m not sure that factors like the media have an important effect. This is not something that is promoted, for instance, having a girlfriend who also has same-sex attraction. I don’t see it there.”

Apostolou did recognise some of the limitations of his arguments and accepted that more research needs to be carried out if we are to understand the complexity of same-sex attractions.

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